It’s officially winter and the holiday rush is pretty much over.  Now what?

For those who have been pondering the idea of selling, winter – believe it or not – is actually the best time to sell a house.  This is very contrary to what popular opinion holds (and what I thought as well), but online real estate brokerage Redfin dug into the data of home sales from November of 2009 to November of 2010 with stats to show why.

They analyzed sales over the four seasons and compared the number of listings, median days to sale, the percentage sold within a year of being listed, and the median sale to original list price ratio.  In all four areas, winter sales outperformed all the other seasons, with the exception of days on the market, where spring sales were the speediest.

Homes listed in winter sell faster: 46 days in winter vs. 55 days in summer

Homes listed in winter are more likely to sell: 59.2% sell in winter vs. 53.1% sell in summer

Homes listed in winter sell closest to their original price: a 2.7% drop from the final price in winter vs. a 5.2% drop from the final price in summer, worth more than $7,000 on a $300,000 home

The Bay Area followed the trends of the rest of the country.  There was less competition in the winter as the least amount of listings were added.  Compared with the median, there was 21.6% less number of listings in the winter.  Bay area winter sales saw the most most percent sold and also got closest to their original list price.  Spring sales happened a bit quicker than winter, but not by much.  Time to start staging that house?